


And the Old Dream Was Dead

by dwight_from_the_office



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, No Plot/Plotless, One Shot, Religious Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:42:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23729239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dwight_from_the_office/pseuds/dwight_from_the_office
Summary: All at once, Alex found himself crying out in his mind to whatever deity may or may not have been listening. Please let him be alive. Please let him be okay. Please let me see him again. Please let me see him again.And now that Alex had started, he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t talk to Tom; what else was he supposed to do?
Relationships: Tom Harris & Alex Rider
Comments: 3
Kudos: 28





	And the Old Dream Was Dead

Cross-legged on his bed, Alex brought his blanket to drape over his neck and shoulders. The sweat trickling between his shoulder blades froze against his skin and he shuddered. He hated to say it, but after two months in India, the soggy cold of London was more miserable than he had ever remembered it being. Alex missed the hot summer evenings, orange light bringing out the glow in the rich wood that made up the house. Warm cotton lingering heavily in the air, cicadas chattering overwhelmingly just outside. It had been the nicest arrangement MI6 had ever put together for him. To date, it was the only house he had lived in that hadn’t been invaded, broken in to, or obliterated. It was the only house that remained secure for the duration of his stay. It was the only house that he hadn’t fled out of fear of danger. It was the only house Alex could associate with safety.

He remembered the loud sounds of sizzling flatbread and clattering ceramics, howling laughter and silvery sentences of Hindi ringing through the air. Olive oil and spices hanging in the thick atmosphere. Knocking elbows with people he liked but whose names he refused to learn–

That sweet house was full of the type of life Alex had forgotten about. But London… London was about the kind of life Alex couldn’t afford to forget _. Resting heart rate 50. Restrict yourself to flesh wounds. Find alternatives if the fall is over 6 meters–_

Yeah, London had nothing on that little house. 

Alex was miffed he was awake. At least asleep he could ignore the inane, seeping chill of the English autumn. In a flash of irritation, Alex twisted around in search of the cause of his awakening. _There._ Just where his head had been. Of course. He grabbed the pillow fiercely and launched it across the room. Growling insults built behind his throat, only restrained by the knowledge that he would be cursing an inanimate object.

Alex had always tended to sleep on his side, legs curled up to his chest, a cheek and an eye smushed up against the pillow. But now, the feeling of anything pushed up against his face indicated danger. Alex had ceased sleeping under the covers for similar reasons months ago. He would _not_ be tangled up in heavy blankets in the case of an emergency, or in any case period. A warm, thin, slightly stiffer blanket would do just fine.

Regardless of practical reasons, the luxury of pillows and duvets were foreign to the point of discomfort. Sleeping on concrete floors or grounds of mud and sand were more normal. Even having a blanket seemed unusual; why would he need a blanket when his mission gear insulated effectively against -30º celsius?

As the grogginess and burst of anger faded away, pain flashed hotly through his body. The housing arrangement on his last mission had been unbelievably kind, but the mission itself was anything but. It was certainly one of the more disturbing ones. Alex wasn’t unused to being around brothels. They were hotspots for criminal activity, often housing drug ops, human trafficking rings, or a place of dealing for contract killers. On this particular mission, Alex had been sent to investigate a chain of brothels suspected of smuggling information to the Chinese Triads about the Australian Embassy (damn ASIS). What better way to do that than by hiding it in robotic sex dolls? Normally, he would go undercover as a prostitute, or cleaner if he was lucky. This time, Alex had posed as a client, a hormonal, arrogant young man from Italy. His fair skin granted him a certain amount of privilege and precious freedom, allowing him to return to each brothel regularly with little interference. Alex managed to investigate up to six dolls a week. Each message he found was replaced with a false message. With any luck, the Triads would miss it and expose themselves.

Needless to say, the mission itself, while disconcerting and frankly very creepy ( _why_ did the dolls have to be so _life-like_?), had gone very smoothly. He didn’t have to have sex with anyone. He didn’t even get into a single fight.

No, it was the extraction that caused problems. Apparently, neither ASIS nor MI6 found it funny when Alex tried to get lost in one of the most chaotic and dense countries in the world. A week of running and carefully subdued hopes that he could disappear had ended with a dirty scare tactic and several sets of zip-ties. It had really just gone downhill from there.

Frustration welled up in him. He had been _so damn close_. Another ten minutes before they realized he wasn’t coming and Alex would have made it, he was sure. Angry tears blossomed and soaked into his lashline. He had expected ASIS to take the ordeal a little less personally. Stupid. They _had_ rented him for the job, anyways. If Alex went missing on their watch, they would be guilty of losing British property. He was foolish to be surprised by the beating that came when they recovered him.

With cracked ribs, a dislocated wrist, and more cuts and bruises than he cared to count, Alex had reason to be crying at three in the morning. But the physical damage was hardly what mattered. Alex was missing Ian, missing Jack, missing Sabina. Missing that charming family.

Alex had the urge to call Tom. Amazingly, he was still alive. A citizen of the UK, _under_ MI6 protection, no less. Tom had been the one thing Jones dared not to touch, if only because she knew how precious that boy was to Alex.

He was something special, that Tom Harris. Still stuck by Alex’s side, nearly unwavering. The last person protecting him from MI6, however feeble that protection may have been. Maybe it was taking Alex out to an ice cream shop in public, where MI6 couldn’t very well grab him and throw him in the back of a black van. Maybe it was hugging Alex when he got a call from the bank, or making him hot chocolate after he got back from a mission. Maybe it was kneading his back after a nightmare, or promising to carry a knife on him at all times. Maybe it was choosing to leave his crumbling family in the midst of dinner so he could go make one for Alex. Maybe it was refusing to run when Alex told him MI6 would allow Tom to cut ties with him. Maybe it was taking medicinal and psychiatric courses so he could help Alex a little more.

_That_ baffled him especially. What other boy would begin studying psychology in high school in pursuit of the highest skills in therapy, _simply_ because he had a friend who would trust no one else? Who did that? Alex had often wondered how one could bond so closely with another when they didn’t even live in the same space. He wondered about Ben and K-Unit, about Cossack and Hunter, hell, even about Jones and Blunt. _How_ could they grow so close? Close enough to know what the other was thinking without even looking? Close enough to put aside their own well-being without a second thought? But now, looking at Tom, Alex understood. He had only ever loved Jack and Ian the same way he loved Tom. Tom was family. Tom was a brother.

As it was, Alex couldn’t call Tom right now, no matter how much he wanted to. In the interest of taking care of their greatest asset, Jones had Tom sent to Stanford in America to study psychology. Even the heads knew how important Tom would be to Alex’s maintenance, especially as the years dragged on. Tom would be allowed back in London intermittently, just enough to keep Alex’s sanity, will, and fear intact. But the boys weren’t blind. Alex was sixteen. The next few years were so very important as MI6 conditioned and perfected their little project. Even if Tom had accepted the permanence of Alex’s job, keeping him close meant running the risk that Alex wouldn’t understand how much power ‘6 held over him. Because that’s all that it was, really. A show of dominance ( _a power move_ , Tom whispered, and Alex laughed). All the boys could do was hope that Alex would be around during Tom’s autumn break instead of half-dead on the other side of the globe.

God, he already missed him. With the blanket over his shoulders to mimic Tom’s warm embrace, Alex felt lost. He felt helpless. Tom wasn’t here to protect him anymore. MI6 had no reason to hesitate to retrieve Alex and Alex had no one to talk to. If he had been stripped naked, sedated up to his eyeballs, and strapped to the ground in a dungeon a kilometer below sea-level, he wouldn’t have felt more vulnerable than he did now. God, Alex knew Tom wasn’t dead but, for everything it was worth, it felt like he was.

Alex immediately clamped down, struggling to stop that train of thought. Tom wouldn’t die. MI6 would never let Tom die because they would never let Alex die, and for Tom to die would be as good as killing Alex. But that was the difference, wasn’t it? Even alive, Alex could very well be dead. It wouldn’t be hard. In fact...to have him pliant? Stripped of his will? Nothing left to lose? MI6 might even prefer that… Was it possible that _that_ was their endgame? God! It was times like this when Alex wished he was more like Yassen––more skilled, more knowledgeable, more observant. Then he might have been able to pick apart ‘6’s motivations. He might have had a shot at figuring out what they wanted. If he had been in the game longer, he could have done it. Alex cringed. He hated to wish for more experience, but he so often found himself in need of it. The bizarre, godly luck that had kept him alive for the Stormbreaker affair had slowly been running dry. At 15 and a half, nearly 18 months after his first mission, Alex was more than aware of it. Jack was living––or dead, he winced––evidence. Alex himself was evidence. Every month since the Stormbreaker op had served to help him develop more skill, to have _just_ enough prowess to scrape by with his life on the next mission.

Unfortunately, Alex predicted that he had years to go before he had enough experience to accurately get inside of ‘6’s heads (Ha. Heads). For all Alex knew, he might never see Tom again. There was no reason to trust anything they said about sending Tom to America for education. Alex wasn’t allowed to contact him, either. He had just figured it was _another_ tactic with which they could establish their dominance over him. But what if it wasn’t? What if there was a reason other than showing Alex how much they could control him? What if it was because Alex might discover that Tom was no-contact because of something else?

All at once, Alex found himself crying out in his mind to whatever deity may or may not have been listening. _Please let him be alive. Please let him be okay. Please let me see him again._ Please _let me see him again._

And now that Alex had started, he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t talk to Tom; what else was he supposed to do?

_Ian always told me that religion is a bunch of crap, a crutch for people who couldn’t deal with the realities of the world. Invented by the desperate. That it’s bad practice to rely on some imaginary being when the only person you can rely on is yourself. Well so what if I’m fucking desperate? Don’t I deserve the illusion of comfort? O-Or of higher purpose? I’m willing to jump on the_ instrument-in-the-hands-of-God _boat, fuck-all if I care. I_ know _I’ve helped people. Just why did it have to be fucking me? Why does it feel so_ god damned personal _? I know I’m awful and I've done awful things but it’s not my fault and you know that. Everyone knows that. Tom is just the only one who bothers to acknowledge it. Even Jack…_

Alex swallowed. Jack was a complicated topic. He didn't know how to handle it. He didn't _want_ to handle it. Their arguments still haunted him ( _“You could stop this. I don’t understand why you keep going back to them. It’s as if you like missions! Is that it? You’re the brain child of the best operatives of the century. Are you really that much like them? Will you become like them?)_ and probably always would. 

Alex had never seen someone look so guilty as Jack did after arguments like those, arguments where he was left trembling with guilt he _knew_ was irrational and Jack was simply hysterical. Alex held her tight and smoothed her hair as she wept apologies. Despite the hurt, he could _never_ be angry at Jack. It wasn’t her fault she felt so overwhelmed. And yet, Alex mourned the days where Jack had been the one comforting him as he cried.

After Egypt, Alex returned to Ian’s house and found packed bags and a hand-written note. Jack must have prepared them weeks prior. It wasn’t until then that he realized how sincerely Jack had felt that Alex was beyond help.

_You tell Jack I love her. You tell her I’m sorry. And Ian and Sab. Hell, you can tell Yassen and John and Helen. I don’t give a damn. You make sure they know I’m sorry. I don’t enjoy killing people. I’m just good at it. And that’s your fault if anything._

_If you were ever to grace me with your divine intervention_ (and Alex had no idea he could be so sarcastic in addressing a fictitious character) _, now would be the time. They won’t let me talk to anyone, not even Ben. I don’t know where they are. They canceled my GCSEs and they want to move me to the bank. With Tom outside of my protection, we are both under their thumb. I would ask for you to get out, except if that were what you wanted, I think you probably would have done it by now. So, whatever happens next, either let it kill me, or help me._

The phone rang. Alex’s head whipped to the side, spotting the phone down the hall. With the grace of a feather, he jumped down from his bed, feet soundless against the soft carpet. Chilling air and suffocating stillness caressed him. Alex desperately envisioned warm evening light and musical laughter as he passed by his laundry, passed through his doorway, passed by his office, until the phone stood in front of him. It rang obnoxiously on the wall. Alex whispered a final plea, happy to deny to himself that he had done so as the soft words drowned in the incessant ruckus.

“ _Help me_.”

Alex picked up the phone.


End file.
